


The Disciple ♦ The Handmaid - Sixth Time's the Chime

by ooopo123



Series: Randomly Generated Ships: Rare-pairs Galore [19]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Ancestor Titles, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ancestor-Era (Homestuck), Ancestors (Homestuck), Canonical Character Death, F/F, Happy Ending, Hunting as a Metaphor for Love, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Time Players (Homestuck), Time Skips, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:20:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28686240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ooopo123/pseuds/ooopo123
Summary: A ticking, clicking, sound comes from the distance. Meulin snaps her head up, wide eyes dancing to and fro as she tries to find the source. She sees nothing. A glance at Cat Mum shows that her lusus hasn’t noticed anything amiss. Meulin looks up once more.That’s when she sees her.Or: The five times Handmaid finds Disciple, and the one Disciple finds her.
Relationships: The Disciple/The Handmaid (Homestuck), The Disciple/The Signless | The Sufferer
Series: Randomly Generated Ships: Rare-pairs Galore [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1542388
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	The Disciple ♦ The Handmaid - Sixth Time's the Chime

**Author's Note:**

> 19th in a 30 part series!

i. Grubhood memories are rarely kept past pupation. Those that are blurred beyond recognition; just shapes and shades in the mind's eye. Meulin remembered her through. 

A shadow poised in the corner of the cavern, motionless and unnoticed amidst the flurry of Jades attending to the Mother Grub's latest brood. Lime green dress and mountainous curled horns striking crystal clear through the muddy memory.

She had tried to approach the stranger. Inherit furbeast curiosity manifesting young, ready and rearing to get her in trouble. Stumbling on fresh insectoid legs she crawled forward, voiceless cries begging her goal to come forward. The stranger stared, watery rusted red lining her tired eyes. Sympathy tears began to fill Meulin's own; blinding her for only a moment, yet it was a moment too long. 

That split second of hesitation was all it took for a caretaker to come sweeping in, swaddling a struggling Meulin up in their cloth laden arms. 

Exhausted and unable to escape her captor, she desperately looked toward the one who had piqued her infant interest, finally blinking her eyes clear of tears. 

It was too late, the stranger was gone.

* * *

ii. Cat Mum was quick on her paws, weaving through the woods silent as a squeak beast; Meulin hot on her tail. They dove beneath the undergrowth, pupils dilated; directed at their target with a single minded determination.

Tensing, Meulin readied herself. Fingers and toes dug into the soil. With an almost soundless huff from her lusus, she’s leaping at the antler beast, taking its jugular between her teeth and sinking all her claws into its hide. It thrashes, desperately trying to buck her. She stays put. Cat Mum has taught her well.

Soon, their prey is down; too exhausted to fight any longer. Meulin crouches overhead, sight trained on the slowing rise and fall of its chest. Her bloodied pout stretches into a toothy grin with the proud purring of her lusus.

A ticking clicking sound comes from the distance. Meulin snaps her head up, wide eyes dancing to and fro as she tries to find the source. She sees nothing. A glance at Cat Mum shows that her lusus hasn’t noticed anything amiss. Meulin looks up once more.

That’s when she sees her.

Covered head to toe in that forbidden lime from so long ago is a girl, far younger than even herself. Her mouth is open wide, surprise and wonder colouring her face in equal measure. Meulin wonders how she never noticed her before. The girl wasn’t making any move to hide herself after all; standing out in the open, anxiously clutching at the bark of a tree. Staring. 

Meulin met the eyes of the stranger. 

The stranger waved. Meulin waves back.

A smile graces the girl’s lips, dimpling her cheeks still plump with pupation fat, before she ducks behind the tree she’d been clutching. She doesn’t come out the other side.

* * *

iii. There’s an adult on the horizon, walking shrouded in jade-lined robes. Skin a dark unburnt grey under the sun’s furious glare. Meulin hid under the cover of a long abandoned wreck of a hive, uncomfortably hot even in her small oasis amidst the midday heat. 

Wide eyed, Meulin’s sight stayed unblinkingly on the encroaching adult just as Cat Mum had taught her. Persevering even as her eyes tear up at the thought of her lusus. Consequently, she is unsure whether the second silhouette shadowing the adult was really there or just her waterlogged and heat addled vision. 

She is equally unsure as to if the familiarity of their figure was yet another trick of the light.

Vigilant to the end, Meulin recenters focus onto the adult when the mirage halts her approach. Meulin wishes she had been hatched with fur like Cat Mum, if only so she’d look just as intimidating when she hissed and growled.

Something is said by the adult, uttered in a language Meulin has yet to learn beyond the tongue of her lusus. Not knowing why, Meulin casts her glaze over to the there-but-not-really girl; undecided on what to do.

She is just as confused as why she finds comfort in the smile and nod from the hallucination.

When the adult bends over, revealing the healthy glow of the ruby red grub tucked away in the Jade’s arms, Meulin finds herself only reassured further. She shuffles over to make room in what little shade she’s got for the adult and her bundle or miracles.

Hesitantly, Meulin takes her eyes off the adult to watch the mirage as she disappears into the distance.

* * *

iv. Laughter rang out across the encampant, blending in with the lively chatter of Signless’ followers as they set up for the oncoming day. Disciple smiled as she prowled the perimeter. Claws unsheathed and eyes sharp. Footsteps silent under the cover of her clowder’s din.

Steadily, with a deadly leisure only Alternia could achieve, the shadows of the surrounding trees began to double; daylight peeking above the skyline. Behind her, sounds of life began to hush. A stillness overtook the world.

And with it, she appeared yet again. The clockwork chime of her arrival unmistakable in the sudden quiet of dawn.

Disciple recognised her immediately. The striking figure clad in lime with the curled horns of a baa-beast seared into her memory. Where Disciple had aged, matured and changed, the girl stayed almost identical to how she’d appeared that fateful day in the desert. 

Studying her lifelong shadow, Disciple noted how only the weariness in her features was new. Lips thin, dull teeth only just poking through, the girl offered a smile in return. 

Sunlight engulfed her as she made her way towards Disciple, the embroidery of her qipao shimmering with each step. Stopping short of where dark met light she pulled a leather-bound book from her sylladex; holding it out for Disciple to take.

Taking a slow breath in, Disciple reached out; hissing as the deadly rays of the green sun sizzled away at her skin. Yet she persevered, taking the book and quickly retreating to cradle it and her burnt hand against her chest.

Her pain dimmed slightly under the gentle joy lining the girl’s features.

The low bellowing call for the changing of the guards rang out. With one last smile of bemused gratitude, Disciple went to wake the Jades’ for the day shift. Idly flicking through the blank pages of her newest possession, memories of sermons gathering at the forefront of her mind; ready to be recorded.

* * *

v. In truth, as a rebel, being culled by order of Her Imperious Condescension had always been an inevitability. Signless was brilliant in the way he made them forget their fate. He’d taught them to hope.

It was hard to stay so when facing down your executioner.

Signless was dead. Murdered by the very same man that took aim once more, this time with her in his sights. The achingly guttural wails of Psiioniic and Dolorosa picked up in pitch, their pleas for them to _spare her! You’ve won! Just let her go! Please!_ falling on deaf ears. 

Just as Kankri had been, she was too dangerous to let live.

Hesitation tensed E%ecutor Darkleer’s muscles like Meulin had observed in a thousand of her past prey. The head of his arrow dipped so minutely anyone who hadn’t spent their grubhoods with eyes to the ground, sniffing out every detail that spelt food, would miss it. Just as Signless had taught her, hope for a tomorrow welled in her chest.

Roars of the crowd broke both hope and hesitation alike.

Chants for them to be rid of the heretic steeled his resolve. With deadly precision he took heart and arms, weapon raised high in calculated accuracy. He, just as Dualscar before him, was not known to miss.

Similarly, myths were not known to interfere in reality either.

Her mere presence was imposing. The way she floated just off the ground, body limp and corpse-like was just as depictions of her appeared. It was more than enough to identify her by. 

Highbloods were often considered fearless, but staring down death incarnate’s hallowed fury made even Darkleer lose the strength to stand. With his bow buried in the dirt Darkleer knelt at the fabled Handmaid’s feet, cradling his blue splattered hand, one of the long thorned needles wielded by the woman similarly buried deep in the meat of his drawing hand.

Just as she’d appeared, Handmaid left in a blinding flash of unnamable colours and the chime of a clock. 

Even without words, the threat was clear.

By the time loyalist gazes were finally torn from where living breathing history once was, Disciple had long escaped. Tome and hope in hand.

She wasn’t safe, even with her immortal protector, but she’d gladly take the head start.

* * *

vi. Hundreds of corpses had been made by her hands. Death hadn't scared her in a long, long time.

It was still disconcerting to see such a featureless severed head, yet no blood. 

Handmaid's own face was lax; something that wasn't quite surprise softening her edges. Disciple stepped over the other's discarded prey, approaching her own.

She had tracked this woman all over Alternia, hiding from and hunting down the Empress' eyes as she spread deviance in the name of her beloved in tandem. Handmaid had always been the one to find her; she was determined to be the one to find her this time around. And she'd done it.

_For all Meulin was Disciple, she was just as much Huntress._

Her Lime green dress was rumpled, torn to expose fuchsia-old dark hardened skin. Typically impeccable make up was smeared, candy red lipstick that made Meulin hivesick bleeding over the lines of her lips. The very tip of her left coiled horn was missing, the ridges chipped as if messily filed down.

Handmaid had never looked more real. 

Long arms and large hands held a deceptive strength in them; matching Meulin's small yet powerful hold with equal desperation and desire.

Even as they pulled away from each other their fingers found each other's, tangling like timelines.

Clockwork began. The dulcet clang of music boxes winding up filling the space between them. It was the prelude to all the times Meulin lost sight; the warning of immediate absence; the cue to let go.

Instead Handmaid held on tighter.

"Come with me."

Meulin has spent sweeps tracking this woman down, and yet, even with her prize in her grasp, the hunt wasn't over. 

_And, for all Damara had been Handmaid, she was and always would be Pishogue._ The spell that brought terror to high blood hearts and devotion from the already devoted.

**Author's Note:**

> This fiction is more or less the entirety of my 2020 productivity and stress. I'm now off to university to study writing more in depth; hopefully delivering higher quality stories in the process. Until next time!


End file.
